While bareboards2 and enoch navigate through their text-based misunderstanding in the politest of manners, I sit a the top of the stairs clutching a banister bar in each kid-hand and stare through these bars into the darkness of the foyer below wincing at every thoughtful agreement reached.

My developing unconscious, a quagmire of reason and understanding.

You alright. I learned it by watching you.

/&scene

I hope that this momentum continues so that future historians will look back and see this time as a second Enlightenment. The fundamentalists, Cassandras and superstitious holy-rollers need to lurch back into the dark from whence they came.

Yes, but you as well, are leaving out a key detail.
She wasn't killed instantaneously. (And nothing you can say will change that statement.) Regardless whether she was "declared" dead or not as she was still alive. Even though she was thought to be dead, clearly her brain was still functioning and was not dead. Her subconscious was still functioning.

Last night I dreamed I was chased by a dinosaur, this does not give evidence that dinosaurs are waiting for us in the afterlife. (poor example maybe - but my point is there.)

And no, in answer to your question, I have NEVER seen nor experienced anything in this existence that gives the possibility that a God exists - sorry. (all due respect.)

And you are wrong about me not looking for anything past the "world view" as you put it. I am spiritual, I'd love for a representation of the mystical to give evidence to itself. I'd love to live in that make believe world, honestly. I just learned early that it isn't there. I don't explain things away but I've never seen anything that could prove it existed. You are not privileged to my experiences so you shouldn't make assumptions - only I know what I give belief to. My reality lays on a solid foundation while yours lays somewhere else.

You are correct in that I don't give myself freely to the unprovable, purely for the reason of faith, that it exists. That, to me, would be more than foolish. If I was to do so, I would fall prey to every word, any person said to me. I would have to join all religions and believe in them all even though they contradict one another. And what is to stop me there, why shouldn't I believe every person who has ever tried to swindle me. Faith is something earned and not given freely and so far religion has swindled me far more in life than it has proven itself to have any basis in reality.

Call me an Atheist if you like, but I prefer the term Realist. I am a Realist who likes to play at fantasy but in the end, I always land with my feat back on solid ground knowing which way is up.




>> ^shinyblurry:

You're leaving at a few key details in your analysis here. Number one, according to her testimony she was declared dead at the hospital. You're saying this was all the result of a subconscious mind on guilt overload, but she didn't know that she was dead until after she experienced the NDE. When she got hit by the car, she was killed instantaneously. She believed that she was dead because, at the moment of impact, she was flung out of her body into a dark tunnel with demons gnashing at her. For her to be influenced by guilt would necessitate that she already knew what was going on, but she didn't until after the experience had already began. It wasn't as if she was laying there for a time, knowing she was about to die. It all happened in a moments time.
Second, she came back to life at the moment that Jesus saved her. When she called upon His name, He came and lifted her back into the light, and it was then that she regained consciousness in the hospital. Do you believe this is a coincidence?
Your explanation is plausible if your underlying presupposition is correct, that Jesus Christ is not alive, but you have no way of confirming that. There is no instrumentation which is going to confirm your explanation either. You really have no basis for ruling out the possibility that her testimony is true, in actuality. So why do you? Have you never experienced anything in all your life which tells you there could be a God out there?
To note, we're both looking at the same evidence, but we're interpreting it different. The reason we interpret it differently is because we both have certain presuppositions about reality, which you could call a worldview. A worldview is like a pair of glasses that you look through to view reality. Your presuppositions are like the prescription for those glasses, and if your presuppositions are faulty, your interpretation of what you see will lead you to faulty conclusions.
The main presupposition of atheists is that of atheistic naturalism. To an atheist, the things of the spirit are ruled out apriori, so therefore there must be a naturalistic explanation for everything. So, an atheist will completely miss any explanation which doesn't fit into naturalistic assumptions, because they are interpreting every evidence through a naturalistic lens. Your explanation here is that this woman is simply a victim of her own lifelong conditioning, which as I pointed out doesn't quite line up with the facts. If what she described is 100 percent true, you would never once reach that conclusion, because of those presuppositions. How do you know you're not simply the victim of lifelong conditioning towards naturalistic assumptions about reality? This is after all what we are taught in school, and which is reinforced in the culture, popular media, books, music, and the like.
>> ^Sagemind:
This sounds like a person who believed in God but didn't stand by the principles of religion. Then she had a close call/ near death experience which forced her to have a guilt overload.
During that overload, she experienced everything she knew in her sub-conscience, everything she had been taught about heaven and hell as she focused on her fears and guilt over the life she had lead.
I'll guarantee she she was brought up in a religious home and religion was a large part of her life, so that when this experience came, her fear of death, caused her to remember everything she had been indoctrinated with. Everything she is saying is true for her and is a sentimental retelling of her experience but this just shows you how fragile and influential the human brain is to ideas if the ideologies are ingrained enough.
I believe she saw and felt what she did, but I also believe what she experienced was a manifestation of indoctrination and fear influenced by guilt which had been ingrained into her during her years of upbringing.
This is why religion is a dangerous tool. It's very powerful and influential and can be used to as a tool to over-power a person's natural abilities to discern the differences between reality and fantasy.

You're leaving at a few key details in your analysis here. Number one, according to her testimony she was declared dead at the hospital. You're saying this was all the result of a subconscious mind on guilt overload, but she didn't know that she was dead until after she experienced the NDE. When she got hit by the car, she was killed instantaneously. She believed that she was dead because, at the moment of impact, she was flung out of her body into a dark tunnel with demons gnashing at her. For her to be influenced by guilt would necessitate that she already knew what was going on, but she didn't until after the experience had already began. It wasn't as if she was laying there for a time, knowing she was about to die. It all happened in a moments time.

Second, she came back to life at the moment that Jesus saved her. When she called upon His name, He came and lifted her back into the light, and it was then that she regained consciousness in the hospital. Do you believe this is a coincidence?

Your explanation is plausible if your underlying presupposition is correct, that Jesus Christ is not alive, but you have no way of confirming that. There is no instrumentation which is going to confirm your explanation either. You really have no basis for ruling out the possibility that her testimony is true, in actuality. So why do you? Have you never experienced anything in all your life which tells you there could be a God out there?

To note, we're both looking at the same evidence, but we're interpreting it different. The reason we interpret it differently is because we both have certain presuppositions about reality, which you could call a worldview. A worldview is like a pair of glasses that you look through to view reality. Your presuppositions are like the prescription for those glasses, and if your presuppositions are faulty, your interpretation of what you see will lead you to faulty conclusions.

The main presupposition of atheists is that of atheistic naturalism. To an atheist, the things of the spirit are ruled out apriori, so therefore there *must* be a naturalistic explanation for everything. So, an atheist will completely miss any explanation which doesn't fit into naturalistic assumptions, because they are interpreting every evidence through a naturalistic lens. Your explanation here is that this woman is simply a victim of her own lifelong conditioning, which as I pointed out doesn't quite line up with the facts. If what she described is 100 percent true, you would never once reach that conclusion, because of those presuppositions. How do you know you're not simply the victim of lifelong conditioning towards naturalistic assumptions about reality? This is after all what we are taught in school, and which is reinforced in the culture, popular media, books, music, and the like.

>> ^Sagemind:

This sounds like a person who believed in God but didn't stand by the principles of religion. Then she had a close call/ near death experience which forced her to have a guilt overload.
During that overload, she experienced everything she knew in her sub-conscience, everything she had been taught about heaven and hell as she focused on her fears and guilt over the life she had lead.
I'll guarantee she she was brought up in a religious home and religion was a large part of her life, so that when this experience came, her fear of death, caused her to remember everything she had been indoctrinated with. Everything she is saying is true for her and is a sentimental retelling of her experience but this just shows you how fragile and influential the human brain is to ideas if the ideologies are ingrained enough.
I believe she saw and felt what she did, but I also believe what she experienced was a manifestation of indoctrination and fear influenced by guilt which had been ingrained into her during her years of upbringing.
This is why religion is a dangerous tool. It's very powerful and influential and can be used to as a tool to over-power a person's natural abilities to discern the differences between reality and fantasy.

Observe, as the republican party slides further and further into the dark ages.

>> ^shang:

He's a hero in my book, but many would call me a "redneck hick" so I really don't give 2 shits about retarded political correctness. I do believe in a right to protect your home and neighborhood. And I have pulled a gun and fired it on a trespasser before, my situation we had trouble with groups of guys "cruising" the roads late at night drunk, in a small town where usually only half a dozen cops on duty any particular shift, cops were called and told to call back if they were seen again.
This time they had stopped car got out and being loud, cursing, raising hell, my and neighbor called police and were waiting when my neighbor was threatened, I went inside got my gun, fired it once into air, they scattered except 1 ran at me and I shot him, course being scared in the moment I hit him in the thigh and he didn't die but him and his friends were locked up and the guy I shot wound up having to pay restitution to me and my neighbor the judge ruled which even surprised me.
anyhow that was nearly 18 years ago today and yes it was bunch of black thugs but hell trespassers get shot every few months in these areas and in plenty of rural areas.


I guess if you picked a car and decided it was going to be the guys "cruising", followed it, and provoked it by following you might have an analogy.

1) No trespassing if the guy is on the sidewalk and has reason to be in the neighborhood (which he did).

2) No proof of any wrongdoing besides Zimmerman's word, and Zimmerman's word is garbage. Not even one witness to the events...just parts and pieces through multiple people who "know" Zimmerman and are going to make assumptions based on him being neighborhood watch and the captain of it at that... an "authority" if you will. They'll argue Trayvon's past comes into question because he was supposedly caught with marijuana and probably "dealing" it. But of the two, Zimmerman has a police record which is used as an example of him "learning from his mistakes". And he and his wife got caught for perjury within the last month.

So....I'm not seeing someone who "did everything right and above board" here.

While in your circumstance you were on your own property and had saw your neighbor get threatened and had someone charge you. It's about as clear cut as it gets when it happens on your own property. Be a little different if you shot the guy near his house when he was on his way home after you followed him into a dark walkway when he ran from you.

If he's a hero, we're screwed.

One: Do you believe that Randall should live or die? Plus your reasoning for it. I would suggest remembering his time in town (episode 10) and what he said to Daryl and Karl.

1: I think Randall will say or do whatever it takes to stay alive. He sees a weakness in their group's mindset and tries to play on it. He took the wrong approach with Karl. However his former group left him to die. He knew of the girl and her farm. Why did he not lead his former group to the farm for supplies at least if he a true member of it? I think he realizes numbers = better chance of survival and that the group we're seeing in the story is not very structured or strong. In the end, not living in a zombieland, he should live. However with the story how it is, and how he manipulated and saw how much the group who normally wouldn't have killed outright tried to kill him AFTER beating his ass....I think they need to kill him. I don't agree with it, I can understand it though. He will be the guy who sets the precedent that if they kill him, all future humans (but probably not women or children) will be killed. If they don't kill him, he will betray them and prove their decision wrong.

2: Karl sees everyone he doesn't know as a walker. Whether they are or not. I think seeing the walker kill Dale with it likely being Karl's fault has probably locked in his reaction from here on out. His only exception will be young women, due to Sophia. As for confession of possibly leading the walker, I think at the moment he's leading towards Shane in character so he probably will not confess to anything to the current group. Although I think it will come out eventually because this show is drama more than anything else.

3: Right time? Probably. Immediate reaction was: This is just stupid, he walked off alone into the dark, saw a torn apart cow and just froze like he was confused as to what possible could have caused it. The effect on the group will be seeing the world as uglier but acting as if it wasn't in his name, and it will be largely negative and become a plot device on how they will screw themselves going forward. I don't see Dale as a member with power, Glenn will take up his role and Glenn has actual juice to make it happen since he's the go to guy for getting supplies. There may be the possibility of Daryl and Glenn sharing the role Dale played as the group conscience since Daryl has been on the outs and needs to be brought back in. I have no idea on the television politics, but his character was doing less and less each episode. At least before he was keeping the RV running and things organized. Anymore he barely appeared in the episodes in any significant role. Daryl, Glenn, and Andrea were doing significant amounts of sitting on the RV and playing lookout.

Personally I'd like to see Daryl replace Dale and then have the other "big" group headed up by Daryl's brother who lost the hand in Season 1. Hopefully it'll be action based and cleverness instead of drama and talking. Where Glenn and Daryl are more fixtures in the series, because Im tired of hearing about the baby/pregnancy and Hershel's family is largely just boring as all hell. And that farm looks like possibly the worst possible place to pick for fortifying and they have done nothing to prepare it......like boarding the lower windows.

I may have to look into the books.....in the middle of some other books right now though.

Lots of stuff bugs me about this show. I know the farm is to keep budgets down, but they added a shitload of recurring characters at the same time as they picked a dull setting....so Im not sure how that saved them money.

Do you like trance?

http://videosift.com/video/howard-jones-into-the-dark-ferry-corsten-ferry-fix-mix

*Furtively looks around to see if anyone saw him here*
*Scurries off into the darkness*

Deposit thes nut jobs on an island somewhere, so that they can keep their ignorance to themselves before they succeed in plunging us back into the dark ages, and the apocalypse they cannot wait for. Oh, and any child under 16 will not be allowed to go with them to avoid the production of more brain washed cranks.

I don't have anything in particular against religion. In fact I believe that the level of global cultural evolution still needs it to a certain degree.
However, the problem lies in the stasis of its moral values. Moral codes present in scripture which might have once made perfect sense to keep people from barbarism no longer apply but are still strictly interpreted by overzealous followers.
The question I often pose to devout believers is what they view as worse- the rise of atheism (and the feared loss of moral values) or the misinterpretation of their own religious belief system (the only pseudo-logical explanation people supply for some of the less humane passages of scripture is after all that it should be interpreted in a different way).

IF religiously based values/faith are so dear and right I'd bet a whole lot more people would (re-)convert to ones system of faith if it didn't mean being thrown back into the dark ages of religious crusades (Catholics, Mormons and Protestants haven't even settled their score yet).

Bummer, I need to read up again about what the different sub-branches of religion think of each other- I remember it was quite funny in a tragic kind of way...

Haha QM. America is going the route of a form of communism if the powers that be (right-wingers... yes even Obama) do not return to us our middle-class. Right now we're under threat of being propelled into the dark ages as the 1% gear up to take their elite genes to another planet and have robots keep us in line from afar. I don't know what I'm talking about but reality is just about as ridiculous as this right now.

Regardless, I'm probably 1,000,00000 more tolerant of people and other cultures than QM, but the Muslim faith has got to go; even more than the fables of Christianity. You guys need to break that hateful shit mold!

The real awesome will start when MP servers support monsters. As the way the game is currently for multiplayer it is currently permanently "peaceful" which is not a bad thing depending on how you view things. However I like going into a dark cave and uncovering a few blocks and then suddenly spiders and penis monsters creepers pour out and try to kick your ass.

I've had a few ragequit moments though... like when you manage to get some diamonds only to die on your way back to your base. Remember folks... BACKUP YOUR SAVE GAME OFTEN!

Three weeks now into the game and I still have not managed to touch anything advanced like minecarts (with boosters) or redstone circuits. The latter of which alone is amazing in its own right.

And as I opened up my trousers and looked down into the dark matter two balls of light emitted some goo across the unfathomable infinity only to come splash me about the eye one google later.

I think you're taking it a lil' too far. Like I don't watch major networks and I didn't hear about this whole drawing muhammed thing like ever before. Bar the original BBC/CNN debacle a couple of years back which did happen during a slow news day. I think most of this is manufactured totally and gives some free publicity to some small sector of nutters.

Like this past year some group announced some plans to hold a rally carrying caskets of dead muslims around the city in the UK where almost all UK troops killed in Afghanistan are carried through.

What followed was NATIONWIDE coverage and outrage from all sectors of the public from MPs to the SUN to the fucking mail about how fucking horrible and insensitive it was and what not.

The rally never happened, it was just announced and PRed into the mainstream media and made the group who wanted to hold it national news they had the head guy up on telly chatting shit. Their representantive actually said that they did this for Pr and the media bought and spewed it back to the masses.

Its just like those pictures of muslims in the UK with signs that read SHARIA is GOOD for UK, all zoomed in with cops around made to look like there are hundreds of people pull back and theres like 12 of them...

Its just yellow journalism of another sort.

>> ^gwiz665:

I'd like to see that, god yes. Major networks want to spark the controversy even more, it's good news, gives good ratings. I'd like to see muslims unite against muslim hatred, on the inter-web for instance. There's not censorship here other than what we make ourselves (and china and so on), but there's far less censorship than on any network.
Every muslim who says "oh that's only the fundamentalists, most of us aren't like that, so I'm just going to stay muslim and mind my own business" is in essence undermining the effort to destroy the fundamentalists and their stupid beliefs. Why don't they make "neo-islam" a thing akin to protestants breaking off from the crazier outliers of their religion, so we know more clearly who to hat and who not to? That would be a good start.
I'm speaking out against islam, christianity, mormonism etc. because I cannot just stand by while we devolve into the dark ages again. Why can't more people just voice their disdain, dislike, disgust or whatever they have for the fundamentalists, who more than anything else sullies their religion, their persons, their families?? Why aren't they OUTRAGED!?>> ^Farhad2000:
Oh come on show me one major media network that has ever been willing to put on the air a moderate muslim voice like Hamza Yusuf.
>> ^gwiz665:
I blame them all. If they want to be a religion of peace, they have to speak out against the violence. As long as they just go along with it, they are not much better themselves. I spit in their direction.
>> ^MrFisk:
Freedom of speech is the primary thread that the Bill of Rights, and thus, the U.S. Constitution dangles from. However, it is not absolute - e.g., I cannot yell "fire" in a crowded theater.
Now, I hold free speech especially dear to my reasoning. I believe that John Milton's Areopagitica is essential - i.e., "Let [Truth] and Falsehood grapple." (That is the key to explain my Glenn Beck submissions.)
And don't get me wrong, I'm all for drawing Muhammad, but I downvote this because this guy is a moron and don't think that you should blame an entire religion for something a handful of douche bags espouse. The real shame is that these handful of douche bags has been given such a loud voice by the media it quivers others into submission.